61–70 of 197 posts
Vaguely related amusing bit of trivia: the word for smith or blacksmith is one of the most common names about everywhere: Smith (England), Schmidt (Germany), Smit/Smet (Belgium, Netherlands), Fabre/Favre/Lefèvre/Lefèbvre (France), Ferrari/Fabri (Italy), Ferrero/Herrero (Spain), Ferreiro (Portugal), Kowalski (Poland), Haddad (Morocco), Demirci (Turkey), Demirdjian (Armenia), Gof/Goff/Le Goff (Brittany, Wales), Gowan/G…
It's kind of funny, my surname actually does have a huge cluster around my hometown, but my paternal grandfather I inherited that name from was from another part of Germany and only moved here in the 1940s. One time someone from the USA contacted me on Facebook because he has the same surname, to see if we were related. We weren't, but his great-grandparents were from my hometown and emigrated to the USA around 1900…
For those interested, depending on where you live, you can access Ancestry.com through the Public Library for free. In Ottawa, that was case, although as of Jan. 1, 2022, you have to go in person. Through there, you can search by name or even place of origin, and you can see the immigration records. May of which even have the photos! I noted some people that went to Brazil and could see the entire person and his family. I'm sure many people don't know that.
I was able to see my Grandfather's record to Canada in 1925 New Brunswick, and my Great Uncle's record in 1911 to Omaha, Nebraska. I'm also told my Great Grandfather came to the US in 1901, but I have been unable to track his record, because after having manually reviewed 1000+ records, I can tell you with confidence that spelling errors are rampant.
You had names change from say Smith, to Sally, and you can see the scratches as the records were modified. It's hilarious! Also, they even misspell the names in the same record. So searching is very, very hard, and instead you have to put in a broad search, like city (which can also be misspelled), and then manually look through the records. The only thing that I can say that is pretty accurate is the year. So that should be your starting point.
Good luck!
https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php?sur=hitler...
It is sad that most, if not all, of the databases don’t take into account accents and other phonetic signs. My last name is completely different with and without and accent. Actually in my case different languages, without accent is a Spanish last name and with the accent is Catalan. That means that people like me have to keep record of our real names. Also curious that databases have been one step backwards, in Spai…
This usually presents a problem online, and I've sometimes considered changing my last name because of that. I had never thought about the fact that this must be even harder for French and Spanish speakers, with the high amount of accents compared to Umlauts and the "sharp s" in German.
this website is an ad-riddles mess